Help us make the only email client you'll ever need

UPDATE: We're featured at TechCrunch!  Read about "Crowdfunding, Micro-patronage, And The Future of Free Software"

UPDATE 2: We've expanded out list of promised features to include GPG private, calendar integration, and importing from Google Contacts!

UPDATE 3: Read Bytemark Hosting's Managing Director Matthew Bloch case for supporting Geary and watch his video!

Yorba was founded to bring great software to the free desktop.  That's why we created Geary, a modern email client for the Linux desktop.  We realized it was time for a fresh approach to email.

Geary is incredibly easy to use.  You type in your email address and password and your Inbox appears.  Geary organizes your email as conversations, not as threaded trees of who-replied-to-whom.  It's a snap to blast out a quick reply to a friend and then archive the conversation for later.

We've come far with Geary, but there's a lot more work to do.  That's why we need your help.

Who is Yorba?

Yorba is the creator of Shotwell, a powerful and elegant photo manager for organizing your photo collection.  Our design goals were to make Shotwell as easy to use as possible.  Anyone should be able to sit down at their computer, plug in their camera or phone, and instantly begin organizing their photo collection.

Shotwell is now the default photo manager on Ubuntu, Fedora, and many other Linux distributions.  We have a large and active user base that's only growing.  We've reached this success by making careful design decisions and listening closely to the requests of our users.

Now we're bringing this same measured approach to Geary.  We think Geary should be easy-to-use with a clear, concise user interface.  It will do one thing -- email -- but it will do it right.  And it should be fast.  We hope to make Geary the only email client you'll need.

How we plan on using your contribution

Yorba currently has three full-time engineers working on Geary.  Your contribution will allow for those engineers to continue to devote themselves to developing the application.

With a successful fundraising campaign, we plan on developing the following features for Geary:

• As-fast-as-you-can-type searching
• Always-on notification of new emails
• Support for all major IMAP servers
• Save and auto-save drafts
• NEW! Transparent GPG integration (digital signing and encryption/decryption of messages)
• NEW! Calendar integration -- Geary will let you add invites you receive via email to your favorite calender application
  
• NEW! Import address book from Google Contacts
  
• ... you tell us!  We listen to our users.

The amount of money we're asking for is the bare minimum to make the next version of Geary.  Every dollar over $100,000 goes toward more features and a faster, stable email experience.

Why so much?

Some people have asked why we're asking for $100,000, or have suggested that an email program isn't worth that much money.  A few things worth pointing out:

• Quality software is expensive to develop.  As explained above, we're paying three full-time engineers to develop Geary.  We have little overhead other than that -- our development workstations have been are paid for with past income.  Your contributions go directly to the development of Geary!
• Likewise, know that existing email applications had similar development costs but were in many cases subsidized by corporate sponsors.  Yorba is accepting no corporate sponsorship for the development of Geary.  That means your priorities are our priorities.
• Other software crowdfunding campaigns ask for less money, but they plan on selling their software later or tying it to a subscription service.  Geary is 100% open-source and is tied to no email or pay service.  What we're asking for is exactly what we think is needed to develop the features we've listed above.
• Finally, remember that we're not asking you for $100,000, rather we're asking everyone to contribute a little toward that amount.  What's a program like Geary worth to you?  Most people leave email open every day and all day and are constantly working with it.  Is that worth $10, $25, or $100 to you?

Why are we asking for help?

Open-source is undeniably a success.  One area where open-source continues to have trouble is in the area of funding.  Some projects are built by volunteers who can only devote weekend and evening hours to development.  Other projects lean on corporate sponsorship for support, accepting all the obligations that come with it.

By funding Geary via direct contributions from its community, Yorba gains the kind of independence that corporate sponsorship lacks, as well as the dedicated time to develop the software fully, not in fits and spurts.  With the money you contribute, Yorba can build a robust email experience for the entire community.

Current status

We've just released Geary 0.3 under the LGPL 2.1 license.  You can download the source code directly from Yorba.  If you're running Ubuntu or one of its derivatives, you can install it from the Yorba PPA:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:yorba/ppa
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install geary

Please feel free to try Geary out and see how far we've come!  We hope that once you try Geary, you'll appreciate its features and simplicity.  It's a working demonstration of our vision and how your contribution can make that a reality.

Building a better email client

That's where you come in.  Your contribution to Yorba goes directly to the devleopment of Geary and our dream of a world-class email client.  We'll keep you up-to-date on developments and let you know when new features land.  And as time goes Geary will grow into an even better application, one you can use every day for all your email needs.

• Import address book from Google Contacts